Only
make it as easy for me as you can." But in the presence of his
children--it was they, rather than Wallace, that he minded--he was at
once evasive and domineering.

"I thought we'd already disposed of that suggestion," he said. "If the
situation is as it has been made to appear to me there is not the
smallest reason why March should be put off; why Mary and Rush and the
friends we have asked in to meet them, shouldn't be permitted to hear his
songs; or why I shouldn't myself. I think we'll consider that settled."

Paula rose all in one piece. "Very well," she said--to the audience, "it
is settled. Also it's settled that I shall not come down to dinner. As
for what people will think, I'll leave that to you. You can make any
explanation you like. But I shall sing those songs to March--and for
him--for all they're worth. I don't care who else is there or whether
they like it or not.--A lot of patronizing amateurs! Bring them up to the
music room about nine o'clock, if you like. I'll be there."

She left behind her, in that Victorian drawing-room, a silence
that tingled.

CHAPTER VI

STRINGENDO

A crisis of this sort was just what the Wollastons needed to tune them
up. The four of them, for Lucile had to be counted in, met the
enemy--which is to say their arriving guests--with an unbroken front.
They explained Paula's non-appearance with good-humored unconcern. She
was afraid if she sat down to Lucile's dinner that she would forget her
duty and eat it and find herself fatally incapacitated for cutting loose
on Mr. March's songs afterward. They must be rather remarkable songs that
required to be approached in so Spartan a manner. Well, Paula assured us
that they were. The family declined all responsibility in the matter, not
having themselves heard a note of them, but if you wanted to you might
ask Mr. Novelli, over there. He'd been working over them with Paula for
days. As for the composer, he was as much a mystery as his songs. He
wasn't coming to the dinner but was expected to appear from somewhere
afterward.

Novelli, as it happened, was not very productive of information. Half an
hour before the dinner, his wife had telephoned Lucile to ask if he
might bring a guest of his own, a certain Monsieur LaChaise, who was one
of the conductors at the Metropolitan and was to have the direction of
the summer opera out here at Ravinia this year. Portia added with the
falsely deprecatory air of a mother apologi